The Mandelbear's Musings

A random link from FKO: A good photo of me and Debbie in the Hall of Fame concert. There are a few more shots of the concert from the same stream.

Travel notes:

• It helps to take an extension cord in the backpack, but only if you remember that it's there! I need to remember to take one of the little power-strips (3 outlets, 6" cord), too -- they'd be just the thing for the desk.
• We finally got sensible and asked for wheelchair assistance for Colleen. Major win. At least we had sense enough to ask for early boarding in both directions, and waited until almost everyone left the plane before getting up. Made all the difference. Probably still a bad idea to get anything but a non-stop flight, though.
• I thought that a 6:00pm flight was too late. On the contrary, it made for a pleasant, leisurely afternoon: early afternoon in the hotel saying goodbye to all and sundry, and late afternoon going through the airport without having to hurry.
• Next time, put some eBooks on the XO (or whatever's handy with a good battery life and the ability to read text, HTML, or PDF).

Finished breakfast just barely in time for the workshops on Sunday morning. I was torn between Vixy's performance workshop, and Bill Roper's "Forward Engineering a Song", and ended up with Vixy mainly because I could find the room. Missed the anecdote that inspired the intriguing title ("Step out of your bloomers"), but the workshop was definitely what I needed. I know how to figure out chords for a song; performance is my weak spot. And I'd been angsting over the Hall of Fame concert for weeks.

Got to Heather Bruton's slide show, which was wonderful, and a few minutes of Ju's concert before slipping out to find a quiet room to tune and practice in.

Here's the HoF Concert setlist:

"The Chicken Song" (sung by billroper and Marilisa) -- much fun.

"Bigger On The Inside" -- the epitome of a fannish/filkish household: I really had to put this one in.

"There She Goes" (sung by jhayman)

"The World Inside the Crystal" -- had to put my Pegasus winner in, and it's also noteworthy as my first serious computer song. I was joined by ohiblather on flute for this one -- it really sounds better with flute.

"Starship Unity" (Judith)

"Keep the Dream Alive" -- I choked up a little on this one; I still do occasionally.

"I Am the Destroyer" (Bill)

"The Stuff that Dreams are Made Of" -- choked up a lot on the last lines, just like I usually do.

"Harbors" (Sung by allisona)

"Ship of Stone" -- Still the best filksong ever written. I get to say that because Don Simpson wrote it.

One of my better performances, I think. I nailed "Ship of Stone", which is the one I really wanted to do justice to. Probably WItC as well, but I was enjoying Debbie's flute work too much to care. It helps to practice almost every day for a month. No, I wasn't worried...

The Dead Moose and Penguin circle in the Alderwood room was a lot of fun. I don't remember everything I sang, but I did Janis Ian's "The Last Train" at andpuff's request, and closed with "The River" after determining that Tom and Sue hadn't heard it yet.

(I'm afraid that this, like most of my con reports recently, is going to be pretty sketchy. It should be possible to get a better picture of the con through other peoples' entries, as seen through my fko memory keyword. It would be better if you could AND keywords to get just 2008, and sort in reverse. Stupid LJ.)

The hotel has a good breakfast buffet -- I had berries, bacon, sausage, ham, one egg Benedict, and an omelette. The sausage and Benedict weren't so good, but the blackberries and bacon more than made up for it. I like to eat a breakfast consisting mostly of protein; after that I can easily skip lunch. Got together with ohiblather long enough to arrange a practice session for early Saturday afternoon.

It should be no surprise that Friday afternoon was almost entirely spent socializing. Colleen parked herself in one of the chairs next to the conversation pit with the piano, where a succession of con-goers including deborah_c and Interfilk guest Marilyn Miller occasionally entertained. Colleen, as usual, prodded me to sing as well. I really like taking Plink to cons; the little Vagabond is perfect for lobby, hallway, and con-suite filking.

Most of my lobby and con-suite singing involved either "Ferret Went A-Courtin'" or The River.

Tom and Sue's wedding started the evening. Lovely mostly-Celtic ceremony, with music afterward, and a desert reception. The best feature for me was, of course, not having to do anything besides show up; I wore my "Father of the Bride" costume from last month: dark red shirt under a tail coat.

The wedding was followed by opening ceremonies (which I barely arrived in time for), and the Urban Tapestry and Heather Dale concerts, both of which were a preview for next year, when UT is Filk Waif (which is what they call the Toastmaster) and Heather is GoH. I'm going, if it's at all possible budget-wise.

After that, we went up to the con suite for Vixy and Tony's release party. It was packed, but we managed to buy our four copies (one for us, one for each kid, and one for a friend). It thinned out after a while; we finally got down to the open filking around 1am, and to bed around 2:30. Since we were time-shifted three hours, this was actually pretty close to our usual bedtime.

Tonight at FKO Colleen and Steve Savitzky (that's flower_cat and me, in case you didn't know) were inducted into the Filk Hall of Fame; the other inductees were Bob and Anne Passovoy. (I'm sure somebody will correct me on the spelling. Thanks!) links when I get to a machine that lets me do tabbed browsing (done: 04-08); the XO is great for most things, but...

Well, we're packed and ready to go. I decided to take only the XO, with a minimum of data -- anything else I need I can grab from the web. Then at the last minute I decided to put a copy of my working directories onto a USB drive; it'll probably take all night at the rate it's going. Grump.

I also decided not to take CDs for sale -- I know at least two dealers are going to be there, and if they don't have enough stock, well... At some point I'll have to figure out the proper procedure for taking stuff for sale through customs, but I don't have time to research it tonight.